Marby Noffki

The Manoir de Gourlay

May 19, 2008 |  4 comments
Image Credit: Midjourney Marby Noffki: Dreams are still very much a scientific mystery. It is generally agreed in the scientific community that the brain needs to rest and recharge each night, and that dreaming is a part of this process. Some have described dreams as being a mental information dump, which is why they often make little sense, or are even forgotten by morning. They are like a mental fun house, where all those things that we see, feel, think, or hear throughout the day mingle to create the very often nonsensical world of the dream. However, there is more to a dream than simple mental regurgitation. Dreams can be the window to solutions for problems that we cannot wrap our minds around while awake. They can manifest as reflections of our anxieties, hopes, deepest secrets, and fears. They can be premonition. Some say that the dead can work themselves into them in order to relay a message that might be lost if relayed during our waking ours when we are prone to run from a ghost and wet ourselves.

This brings me to last weekend.

By the time this is posted, it is likely that one or two weeks will have passed, so I will explain that during the first weekend in May, my husband and I went to Northern France with a group of friends that belong to the same Lotus car club. We organize track days so that we can play with the little hot rods on a wonderful little track in Abbeville, France. Recently, rather than stay in Abbeville proper, we have arranged to stay at a bed and breakfast called the Manoir de Gourlay, about twenty miles outside of town. I don’t wish to sound like an advertisement, but I highly recommend this place, in part for its breathtaking beauty, but also because the people who run it are among the most down to earth, side splittingly funny folks in the world, and in the two times we have stayed there, my husband and I have not been able to help but befriend them on a level that goes beyond paying customer.

The oldest part of the Manoir was built 500 years ago, with an addition added on about 300 years ago. The section that is 300 years old was accidentally bombed by the British during WWII, and rebuilt shortly after that. Karen, our hostess, has an interest in the supernatural, and claims she is a bit surprised that she has never had a ghostly experience there, and that her guests have never reported anything unusual, though many who are sensitive, like myself, have often mentioned a feeling that something fleeting and benevolent walks the halls. I don’t know if it is the warmth of our hosts, a benevolent spirit, or a combination of both, but the two times I have been there, I have felt something difficult to pinpoint. It is hard for me to shake the sensation that there is something non-living that works just as hard as the living residents to make guests feel comfortable there. Whether there is anything to this feeling or not, I don’t know, and I would not commit to a solid yes or no on that issue simply because it would be a lie either way. I really don’t know.My husband and I were in the balcony room of the house, which was the part that was bombed during the war. Though we were too drunk the first night to even dream, it was the second night that left me puzzled by morning, and inspired me to write this piece. We had to be on track early the next day, so we very responsibly curtailed our drinking, turning in shortly before midnight. My dreams that night made for an uneasy night of sleep. Every time the dreams came, I found myself walking through the rubble of the Manoir under a full moon.

Though I never saw her, I felt the presence of a woman near me the whole time, leading me through the smoking stones and charred furniture. I woke up three or four times during these dreams, and each time I drifted back to sleep, this imagery would return. I was not afraid, and in fact, I was completely emotionless during these dreams, simply accepting that this was how it all looked after that British plane made the walls come crashing down.

It would all be very neat and interesting to say that this dream was the ghostly woman’s way of showing me what had happened to the Manoir during one of Europe’s darkest hours. However, it is the nature of dreams to process information we’ve been given during our waking hours to create vivid pictures in our minds, so to claim that I was given this insight by a ghost is as inaccurate as saying that I wasn’t. I am sensitive, but I also have a vivid imagination and I am not sure if this dream was the dream of a sensitive, or the dream of a history buff whose imagination went wild, inspired by Karen’s story and the gentle beauty surrounding me at the time.

Dreams are funny things, aren’t they?

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